A fascinating account of the buildup and background to the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan and the aftermath. A lot of research obviously went into this book, and although I have read accounts before, those were mainly to do with the horrendous experiences of the survivors. This book makes it very clear exactly what drove the handful of men who controlled the entire Japanese war machine, and their lack of concern with one exception - a man who was always overruled - for the ordinary people. They were just cannon fodder or expected to live off starvation rations - a lot of children died of malnutrition - while labouring to demolish buildings and create firebreaks in the cities which by then were experiencing devastating icendiary bombing raids by the US airforce. Even children as young as 12 were conscripted while the mindless propaganda continued to insist that Japan was winning the war. As long as these civilians 'died with honour', that was all that mattered to those who ruled over them.

Behind the scenes, the heads of the military were resistant to the increasing conviction of the civilian members of the government that a peace had to be brokered - but the stumbling block was the US insistence on unconditional surrender. The Emperor had to be preserved and this had not been guaranteed. The book documents the peace 'feelers' these top officials put out, through various channels, the chief one being via the ambassador to the Soviet Union who was expected to convince the Russian goverment to be the mediator of an end to the war despite the - unusual for the time - blunt and determined attempts by that ambassador to explain to his superiors that the Russians had no interest in doing that and were in fact building up to break their agreement with Japan. The strange system of government in Japan at the time - where the Emperor was literally a living god but was also rarely expected to voice his own opinion and where, if he said that Japan should surrender, it would be seen as influence from corrupt officials who would then be fair game for assassination - meant that despite crippling losses and a mounting death toll from the conventional bombing, there was no will among the military or their leaders to cease fighting.

Contrary to the impression which has been given by the US government since the end of WWII, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are shown in the book to be of no consequence to the Japanese rulers. The chief reason for their finally agreeing to surrender was that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan and was invading Japanese conquered territory in China. It was useful as an excuse - the Emperor for one used this in his broadcast to the general population that it was to save them from a cruel new weapon, but in his broadcast to the remnant of the Japanese fighting forces, he didn't mention it - in that, the reason given was that the Soviet Union had declared war and there was no point fighting such an overwhelmingly superior force. The author shows that the Japanese would most likely have surrendered without the dropping of atomic weapons, certainly without Nagasaki being bombed, and could have been induced to give up due to the blockade which had starved the country of all raw materials and fuel and food supplies. The decision had already been made in the US government not to invade, even before the atomic bomb had been tested, so there certainly was no saving of huge numbers of American lives as the public have always been told despite the few dissenting voices.

After the war, the US officials clamped down on news of radiation sickness and confiscated the documentation of Japanese doctors who tried to research it, as well as refusing to hand over any medical supplies to those desperately struggling medical professionals. At the same time, with inducements of food - or sweets to children - they induced Japanese who had felt the effects of the bomb or its aftermath to submit to tests, and did not provide any treatment. The whole attitude was one of extreme callousness. I had read about this before, but here it forms part of the continuous narrative of self serving and self deceiving attitudes among certain men in power in the occupation forces. Some did speak out, but reports were hushed up and so on.

In general, this is an illuminating book which raises moral questions such as how is it possible for countries which prided themselves on being Christian and democratic to inflict such horrendous suffering on a civilian population - commencing with the carpet bombing with incendiaries and high explosives and culminating in nuclear holocaust. As Ham shows, the Allies had condemned the barbaric treatment of prisoners and those conquered by Germany and Japan, and yet in effect had sunk to the same level. The only thing that holds this book back from a 5 star rating for me is that it is very focused on the US role in the Pacific and does not even acknowledge that the Royal Navy had a role in the Pacific war, which is an attitude shown in Hollywood portrayals for some years. A small acknowledgement of the British contribution in WWII would have provided a little balance. ( )

This is the best book on the subject I've read yet, a superbly researched and absorbing narrative. I particularly like how Ham alternates between the American and Japanese perspectives. He effectively shatters the popularly held belief that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified because they ended World War II in the Pacific without a costly invasion of Japan’s home islands. Ham further convincingly argues that the bombings played no role at all in the surrender of Japan, that it was rather Japan's feared entry of the Soviet Union into the war made real that was the deciding factor. A skillful, comprehensive, provocative, and challenging work of history. ( )

I purchased Ham’s tome because I have long held a genuine sense that I really did not have my head around the complexities of the Japanese bombing. Coming from my perspective, driven not least by exhaustive readings of the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, that the world changed dreadfully on July 16, 1945, when the obscenely named Trinity was detonated in the New Mexico desert, I realized I simply did not know enough about the circumstances and mindset that led up to its dark successors, Little Boy and Fat Man. Here was a chance to rectify the black hole in my knowledge pool.

What an outstanding resource Paul Ham has provided. No one-eyed the USA can do no wrong reader will agree – or probably even persevere, but to this reader it seemed that Ham skillfully negotiates pitfalls of doctrinaire anti-Americanism, blind pacifism, and plastic militarism with overwhelming skill. Few figures in the tragic narrative of preparation for, delivery of, and aftermath to Hiroshima and Nagasaki come out of the narrative unscathed, yet simultaneously few emerge as unambivalent villains. Ham has no sympathy for after the event hanky-wringers (Oppenheimer, for example) or Ramboesque opportunists (LeMay, though not responsible for nuclear warfare, Groves, who was), nor tries to exonerate the Japanese from a vile period of sub-human cruelty. Certainly, as others have noticed, Ham is of the opinion that a militaristic nose-thumbing at the emerging Soviet superpower underscores the saga and its aftermath, but he does not ultimately claim there can be nor ever could have been a naïve return of the nuclear genie to her bottle. Truman comes out of the narrative badly, but Ham’s case is well presented. If heroes emerge from the chronicle it is the survivors, those hibakusha maimed beyond belief who dared to rise from the ashes of their respective cities and live again, those who like Tagashi Nagai spent their every last ounce of life force trying to ameliorate the plight of the dying and the grieving, those who strove to build a just Japan.

Would that this volume could be on the reading list of every final year secondary school curriculum (and the reading list of every undergraduate curriculum, from physics to theology, sociology to economics). Ham’s writing is extraordinarily compulsive, and the torrid tale he tells, and the exhaustive research he utilizes to corroborate his case, ensures that no reader could digest his work while believing that a nuclear arsenal can save or redeem the world. Sadly the world that was born on the day Trinity exploded has not in any temporal sense been redeemed: referring to the Dr Strangelove figure Dr Edward Teller, Ham observes (ruefully, it seems) “posterity had judged him and the exponents of MAD [mutually assured destruction], partly correct, insofar as mankind had avoided a nuclear war through the assurance of mutual annihilation; that does not mean, of course, that it will not happen, and the dire uncertainty and immense expenditure of maintaining the balance of mutually assured death has turned the minds of enlightened leaders to the policy of nuclear disarmament.” (468). As he glances into a post Nagasaki world, a post Bay of Pigs world, a post Berlin Wall world, Ham observes that it was in the end economic, not military forces that drove the Soviet bravado to its knees and that there is no guarantee that a tin pot state (my words, not Ham’s) or rampant nationalistic or religious fundamentalist breakaway group will not detonate nuclear winter. ( )

The author's insistence that this book presents the "real" story of the atomic bombings seems to indicate that the true story hasn't been told before. That isn't even true from a revisionist perspective. The argument that the bombings were unnecessary have been made before. The author really don't cover any new territory in that regard. Probably the only good feature of this book is the detail he gives in focusing on the victims of the bombs. The suffering caused by the bombings is not in dispute. I would not recommend this to anyone who was looking for the story of the bombings. This is only the "real" story for those who really like revisionist history. ( )

A little longer and more detailed than I would have liked, but convincingly takes on one of the great historical questions - was the use of the bomb justified. It's terribly complex and still being vigorously argued, this is probably the best introduction. As an Australian Paul Ham seems to have a clear uninvolved eye. For many Americans even raising the question is enough to raise blood pressure, so this is not something for the patriot, but it is a sober and objective account that raises many questions. The myth of the 1 million Americans saved by the bomb is dismantled as after-the-fact justification by Truman, which says a lot about an attempt to rewrite history. Ultimately, I think the bomb was more about American projection of power during the final days of the war, and for that we should not be surprised except by the horror of how many paid the terrible price. I used to believe the bomb was what ended the war, now I don't believe so, it was a side-show of that war but laid the groundwork of the next. ( )